The Strangers We Know

by Pip Drysdale

  He paused for a moment. ‘And, it wasn’t all bad. You enjoyed the fruits of Oliver’s labour, didn’t you?’

  I swallowed hard. What was I doing? I’d got what I came here for, now I wanted to leave.

  ‘When will you get it to me?’ I asked.

  ‘When will I get the copies of Oliver’s files?’

  ‘I can get them to you tomorrow.’

  ‘Where are they? You didn’t leave them lying around did you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. DCI Holland and I had already constructed this lie together. ‘They’re in a safety deposit box at the bank. Old school.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, standing up and coming over to sit down beside me on the sofa. I didn’t like having him that close to me. I could feel the heat pulsing off his skin. His breath reeked of Scotch and his skin of some sort of patchouli cologne. I needed to leave. I stood up.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked, grabbing onto my wrist. It wasn’t a violent grab, but there was something in his eyes, something I instinctively knew was bad.

  ‘I’m meeting a friend,’ I said, with a small smile. A stiff, toothless, fake smile. I expected him to let go then. But he didn’t. He pulled hard. My breath caught and suddenly I was being pulled back onto the sofa. I was tumbling. Burning my knees on the carpet. Bumping my chin. My vision went white and his hands reached for my throat. His thumbs were on my windpipe and all I was thinking was: Where the fuck are the police? But maybe they couldn’t hear anything bad was happening. I hadn’t screamed. It’d all happened so fast. I reached for my glass of wine, I could hit him with that, but I couldn’t get to it. I tried to bang the recording device. I needed them to know something was wrong. I couldn’t breathe. I gasped for breath. My arms thrashed around as both his hands tightened around my neck.

  They weren’t coming. I was all alone. I reached blindly again for my bag, pulled at the handle and it fell down onto the floor beside me. That was when I remembered. My audition. My hairspray. I reached inside, pulled it out, feeling desperately for the direction of the nozzle and sprayed it into Justin’s eyes.

  ‘Fuck!’ he yelled, pulling back.

  I gasped for air. I was heaving. As I tried to push myself up from the floor he was fumbling towards me again, his hands trying to clean out his eyes. This was when I tried to scream. But he’d done something to my voice box with his hands and nothing came out. It was a nightmare. And he was crawling towards me now.

  Standing up.

  He could see.

  He was moving, lurching towards me.

  I didn’t really think, it was instinct, years of planning a defence strategy, of looking for weapons and paying attention to exits. I reached for the lamp which was luckily lighter than it looked and swung it at him. It hit him on the side of the head and he fell.

  Ba-boom.

  Then he was lying there, blood pooling by his head. So much blood. It was just me and him and the lamp in my hands. All I could hear was my breath: short and sharp. And I had this moment: I could hit him again. I could make sure he was dead. Then I wouldn’t need to be scared anymore. I held my breath. I went to swing.

  And then I didn’t.

  Instead I dropped the lamp, a metallic clang bounced off the walls, and then I just stood there. Watching him for movement. Waiting for the police to finally come. To help me. And the blood, it just kept coming. I was watching it, dazed, bile rising in my throat, shaking with adrenaline, when the police finally rushed in.

  In my memory of that night, I don’t hear them enter. One moment I was standing there staring at Justin, and the next there were hands on my arms, holding me up. Only then came the noise. The dizziness.

  Three policemen were gathered around Justin. One was putting handcuffs on him. One was yelling for someone to call an ambulance. And then a blanket was put around my shoulders by the third one and I was taken back out into the grey and olive green hallway. Then out into the summer night air.

  THURSDAY, 14 JUNE 2018 (7.22 AM)

  It was the next morning in bed that I first read the newspaper’s version of the story. I was back at Tess’s flat by then and she was in the shower.

  The headline read: OH, THE TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE.

  Why the newspapers always try to wax poetic is beyond me.

  Below the headline were two pictures.

  The picture of Brooke was terrible – she looked the epitome of evil – but the one of Justin annoyingly good. That right there exemplifies all that is unjust in the world.

  And the article read:

  Brooke Shaw (pictured above left) was yesterday charged with the murder of Oliver Buchanan last Sunday night. Mr Buchanan was killed in his home. It is believed Ms Shaw had been stalking both Mr Buchanan and his wife for months, planning the attack …

  My eyes scanned down for the bit about Justin.

  Justin Langley (pictured above right), Mr Buchanan’s business partner, has been arrested. He is currently in a critical condition in hospital. No further details are available as to the circumstances of his arrest.

  That’s what a good lawyer will buy you: privacy.

  I let out a sigh and put my phone down beside the bed. I was scared to get out of bed. What else might be waiting for me?

  The bathroom door opened and Tess emerged wrapped in a blue dressing gown, a cloud of steam behind her.

  ‘Hey.’ She smiled at me.

  ‘Hey,’ was all I could manage. I stared up at the crack in Tess’s ceiling, the same one I’d been staring at the morning I found out Oliver was dead. And as I lay there, I couldn’t quite believe that all that had happened was real.

  Tess went through to the kitchen and flicked on the kettle: ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I called back. And I remember that it struck me how even after everything, some things stayed the same. Tess was still making coffee. Grace would be flipping through the papers at Boulevard later that morning. All the most mundane details of everyday life remained the same.

  But other things were not the same and every time I allowed my mind to drift to things like the timbre of Oliver’s voice, hot tears would roll down my cheeks.

  The kettle whistled in the distance and I twisted my head to glance outside: blue skies. Blue. Fucking. Skies. A moment later I could smell coffee and Tess was coming into the bedroom and putting a cup on the bedside table.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. Tess sat down on the bed beside me, blowing on her coffee, watching me. I clenched my eyes shut and then the sobs I’d held inside the night before started.

  ‘Oh hon,’ she said, putting down her cup as she lay down beside me. ‘It’s okay,’ she soothed, stroking my arm as the whole room filled with my guttural, ugly sobs. The kind that wouldn’t make it to film. He was gone and he was never coming back.

  ‘I know it doesn’t feel like it, but it will be okay. Eventually.’

  I nodded and sniffed. Because she was right it didn’t feel like it.

  And it wouldn’t for a long time.

  * * *

  The first few weeks were inky black. Twenty-four hours lasted ten times as long as usual. Every time I saw ‘DCI Holland’ flash up on my phone screen, my entire body would clench as I readied myself to learn something else about Oliver I didn’t want to know.

  It was two weeks after it all happened when she told me Justin was out of the hospital. He’d been charged with tampering with evidence and assault.

  The next time she called was to tell me Brooke’s trial had been set. I had to go – she had murdered my husband. But how could I look at her, at her parents, knowing they were victims in a way too?

  But I did go. And I listened. And I wept.

  The more extensive charges against Justin took a lot longer to substantiate – though they were helped along at least in part by the silver hard drive Brooke had taken from me and since relinquished. Still, the truth of that situation was worth the wait. It was like watching a true crime documentary unfolding before me.

  It was Machado who cra
cked first. He was eager to cut a deal. And so he provided the police with the audio file he had of Justin and Oliver trying to extort money from him in the first place. Them telling him the deal: you pay us, we’ll get Hornsby Private Equity to invest in you.

  That was what Lucamore was for, you see: collecting payments like this from a multitude of companies. Machado was their only real expense and had become a mandatory partner. But not an entirely useless one; not for Justin at least.

  Because then Machado confessed to organising to have Alyssa killed, on Justin’s order.

  Alyssa had been threatening legal action, and Justin decided it was the only way to keep her quiet and preserve their thriving ‘business interests’.

  He told the police that Oliver had met with Machado privately to make sure Justin wasn’t going to do anything rash, but by then it was too late. In Machado’s words, ‘Justin said it needed to be done’.

  So yes, Alyssa had lapsed into a depression. She had suffered terribly. But she hadn’t, it turned out, killed herself.

  I thought back to the tangible sadness that had clung to Oliver for those few weeks after I followed him to the Mandarin Oriental hotel. Now it made sense: he knew what had happened to Alyssa. He was mourning. It had nothing to do with me.

  But he’d also discovered what Justin and Machado were capable of. Especially Justin.

  So when Brooke started doing things like breaking into the flat and stealing his computer he took out life insurance. But when she started drawing attention to him and Justin by emailing Hornsby Private Equity, Oliver got scared. He couldn’t afford to be seen as a liability by Justin because he’d seen how that played out. And so he took precautions.

  He left that damning evidence with his will in a place he knew Justin would never find it. And then he told Justin it existed. It seemed like a clever way to stay safe – from one sort of danger, at least.

  Of course when Oliver died, Justin was desperate to find it. Hence his messages to me and the break-ins.

  I wondered for a long time why Brooke had targeted us and not Justin, and the answer to that finally came during Brooke’s trial. She had no idea Justin was involved. Nada. He’d kept himself at a safe distance. Oliver had presented the investment opportunity as a secret; something Justin didn’t know about. My money says that was Justin’s suggestion as he knew Alyssa would trust Oliver implicitly. So when Brooke went looking for the culprit, her sights landed on Oliver, on me – on us – not on the puppeteer himself.

  And so, when Justin was sentenced, a huge wave of relief came over me.

  But with Brooke it was different. I cried. To anyone looking on they would seem like tears of relief, but the truth was more complicated. Because, even though she had murdered Oliver, I understood that, as much as she had hated me, and tried to frame me, Brooke was a victim too; she was tired of feeling helpless. I knew what that was. And when I thought of that moment standing over Justin, of how my arm twitched and I almost swung again, I understood her in a way that made me question myself.

  So, no, recovery wasn’t going to be easy. During those first few months, I spent a lot of time staring at the wall, smoking Marlboro Lights, unsure I’d ever get through it.

  But here’s the thing with life: You have to get through it. There’s no choice. Eventually, even in real life, the heroine has to win out in the end.

  And all that happened almost a year and a half ago.

  I still think of Oliver every night before I go to sleep. I don’t think of the man who betrayed Alyssa the way he did. I think of the Oliver I knew him to be, the one who tied that wish bracelet around my wrist, the one who made me feel safe. My stomach still turns at the thought of Justin. And I still wish more than anything that things had gone differently for Brooke. That she’d chosen differently at that final moment. But, here’s the thing: I understand why she didn’t.

  So I intend to treat her character kindly. Justin … less so.

  Because there is one good thing that came out of all this.

  It was about five months after everything happened – Justin and Brooke were still making appearances in the paper and London was twinkling with Christmas lights, the airwaves filled with ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ by then. It was around 3.30 in the afternoon and getting dark, and I was fiddling with the tree in our window display and trying to make a set of fairy lights behave. Grace was over at her desk sipping tea and flipping through the paper. She’d just told me some news about the Royals and I was thinking about Tess. I was meeting her that night for a drink. She and Zach, the guy she met that night at the art gallery, are all #couplegoals now. But at the time it was still relatively new and ill-defined and I was wondering how long it would last. That’s when the call came in.

  It was my phone that was ringing.

  I turned my head to see it flashing white from my desk.

  I put down the wooden rocking horse ornament I was about to place on the tree and fumbled out of the window display towards it. It was probably DCI Holland.

  But it wasn’t. The name flashing back from the screen was: Clarence.

  I picked it up: ‘Hello?’ I hadn’t heard much from Clarence since the last audition that went pear-shaped and I hadn’t had the energy to chase him.

  ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘I have news.’

  I thought it would be about an audition. I should have learned I couldn’t predict what was coming next by then.

  Because Netflix had been in touch. They wanted to make a series based on my story. They wanted me to consult.

  And so began negotiations: Clarence and I insisted on me being an executive producer so that’s what I am. I mean, I needed something good to do with all that insurance and inheritance money paid out after Oliver’s death. It was all too sad otherwise.

  If you want to watch it, it’s going to be called The Strangers We Know.

  So my acting career might have never taken off but this just might give me a sense of purpose, a reason to have gone through everything I have. A way to bring someone else hope that no matter how bad things get, or how fucked up they feel inside, things can always get better. I’m going to tell this story exactly as it happened (minus, of course, the bit about breaking into Brooke’s place and using Annabella Harth’s email address to tip off the police. I’m pretty sure that was illegal so that bit I’ll claim as fictionalisation … Shhh.) But aside from that, I’m not going to try to portray myself as anything other than what I am. There will be no token-blonde wife here. Just me. Still standing. And coming soon to a Netflix screen (and maybe a dating app) near you.

  So yes, I stand by what I said at the beginning of this story. We like to believe we’re in control of our lives; that if we buy insurance, think positive thoughts and pay our bills, we’ll be safe. Everything will be okay. But the truth is that sometimes it’s not okay. Sometimes all it takes is one plot twist to realise nobody is who you think they are and everything you know to be true is actually false.

  But here’s what I didn’t say, what I myself am proof of: sometimes the converse is also true. If we hold on long enough, hard enough, and refuse to give up, every now and then those plot twists … well, they go the other way too.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to my publisher, Fiona Henderson, not only for publishing me and having faith in me, but for all our creative problem solving chats. To Dan Ruffino, for always making me feel like part of the Simon & Schuster Australia family. To my editors, Deonie Fiford, Siobhan Cantrill and Michelle Swainson, for your attention to detail and general brilliance.

  Thank you to the sales team for your tireless work, enthusiasm and support, to Tina Quinn and Jamie Criswell in Marketing for shouting about me from the rooftops, and to all the bookstagrammers, bloggers, booksellers, foreign publishers and press who got behind me and my work. Without all of you, nobody would even know my books existed. Thank you!

  To my parents, sister and closest friends for picking me up when things were impossibly hard and for never p
ulling me back down when they weren’t. To all the friends who’ve patiently answered intricate midnight text message questions while I was still trying to figure out the plot. And to Ben Evans for your thoughts on the earliest of drafts and your assurances that I could, in fact, do this.

  Finally, to Life: for the plot twists I never see coming. Thank you for keeping things exciting …

  If you liked The Strangers We Know, you'll love The Sunday Girl, another unputdownable thriller by Pip Drysdale

  The Girl on the Train meets Before I Go to Sleep with a dash of Bridget Jones in this chilling tale of love gone horribly wrong . . .

  The The Sunday Girl

  * * *

  ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!

  About the author

  Pip Drysdale is a writer, actor and musician who grew up in Africa and Australia. At 20 she moved to New York to study acting, worked in indie films and off-off Broadway theatre, started writing songs and made four records. After graduating with a BA in English, Pip moved to London where she dated some interesting men and played shows across Europe. The Sunday Girl, her first book, was a bestseller.

  To find out more about Pip head to:

  pipdrysdale.com

  Facebook.com/pipdrysdale

  Instagram @pipdrysdale

  SIMON & SCHUSTER

  simonandschuster.com.au

  www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Pip-Drysdale

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